Turkish
Coup Failing?

The
situation is still very confused but my impression is that the coup
has probably failed. If a government is not overthrown within a few
hours of a coup taking place then the coup generally cannot succeed.

In
a case where soldiers are confronted by civilians it is notoriously
difficult to get soldiers to open fire unless they are absolutely
sure of the legitimacy of the government which is giving the order
for them to do so. A coup that runs into the sort of opposition this
one is running into from sections of the civilian population
generally cannot succeed precisely because it is so difficult to
persuade soldiers to open fire in such a situation.

The
coup plotters seem to have made two key mistakes:

(1)
they did not immediately arrest the senior members of the government
probably because since the coup seems to have been led by middle
ranking officers they did not have direct access to them. The result
however was that the government was left intact and in a position to
mobilise opposition to the coup.

(2)
they did not announce who they were making it possible for the
government to present them as merely a faction within the military as
opposed to the entire military led in the endeavour by the military’s
senior leadership. Note however that senior officers did not
immediately rush out to condemn the coup or to declare their loyalty
to Erdogan suggesting that they tacitly approved the coup even if
they were not prepared to lead it.

As
of now none of this is certain. We should know the final outcome of
the coup attempt within the next few hours.